Overlooked cross-cultural exchanges: An examination of US collegiate experiences of and interactions among sexuality- and gender-diverse international students

• In Event: Roundtable Group 5
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Insights for SOGIE Inclusion and for Understanding Intersections of Identities in Education

Proposal

Sexual and gender diversity (hereafter, SGD) in higher education has increasingly become a salient topic, as higher education institutions (hereafter, HEIs) are not only bastions of new knowledge but also safer spaces in which students can explore and express their sexual and gender identity in ways that were impossible elsewhere before (Patton et al., 2016). The knowledge created and future professionals educated by HEIs are also important to examine as they can become institutional models and their enactors, respectively, thereby bringing change at both the organizational (i.e., HEIs) and field (i.e., higher education sector) level to address sexual and gender inequality.
Much of extant scholarship focuses on institution-level context when studying sexuality- and gender-diverse students in higher education. In line with the more recent understanding of complex experiences and identities of LGBT+ collegians, scholars have begun to understand that the various characteristics of HEIs are important factors that can illuminate the nuances in the experiences of sexuality- and gender-diverse students, educators, and staff. Research has also shown that various (co)curricular features of HEIs, such as inclusive curricula and faculty and SGD student groups, can positively impact collegians with diverse sexual and gender identities in various stages of construction and navigation (Garvey et al., 2019; Rankin et al., 2019). Among such (co)curricular features of HEIs, the oft-positive roles and functions of student groups in particular and communities in general for sexuality- and gender-diverse students have been examined broadly (Choi & Oh, 2021; Garvey et al., 2019; Lee et al., 2021; Meyer, 2004),
In comparison to studies focusing on institution-level context, studies that foreground society-level context are less nuanced and more homogeneous in depicting HEIs and the LGBT+ people and issues therein. Even with the development of nuanced ways to study and understand sexual and gender identity—namely, its interaction with other identity markers such as race/ethnicity, class, religiosity, and (dis)ability in a local context (e.g., Duran, 2019; Mayo & Blackburn, 2020; Quesada et al., 2015)—many scholars tend to focus on society-level context if their aim is to call attention to society-wide issues. Such issues include the existence of sharia laws condemning homosexual acts (Eng & Yang, 2020) or the necessity of nationwide nondiscrimination policy to combat society-wide homophobia and heterosexism (Choi & Oh, 2021; Kim et al., 2020).
In consideration of both institution- and society-level contexts, this research, which constitutes one part of a larger project, aims to study two aspects of SGD in higher education that warrant increased attention: the US collegiate experiences of international students who embody SGD and the characteristics of such students’ interactions with other members of HEIs. Only recently have the ways that US HEIs and student organizations therein can address the various needs of sexuality- and gender-diverse international students gained some scholarly attention (Nguyen et al., 2017). In expanding this scholarship, examining the collegiate experiences and specific needs of international students who are sexuality- and gender-diverse likely requires an understanding of their cultural backgrounds that inform their personal ideas and norms about SGD (Nguyen et al., 2017), some potentially resistant to the essentializing and universalizing rhetoric of the international LGBTQ+ movement (Nasser-Eddin et al., 2018). Understanding the level of divergence in collegiate experiences, if any, between international students embodying SGD and their local counterparts would also help inform policy and infrastructural features of HEIs to be more accommodative of SGD in its various manifestations.
This research will also examine the interactions among international and local sexuality- and gender-diverse students. Specifically, this research will attempt to study the cross-cultural exchanges of norms and ideas regarding SGD, informed by the students’ various backgrounds, in higher education settings. Understanding who are involved in what types of interactions over which issues within an HEI, specifically within the context of a student group, would further provide nuanced information about the processes of social reality construction among sexuality- and gender-diverse international collegians. Further, understanding what kinds of meanings about SGD are created, negotiated, or modified through interactions in a student group will provide important information about the state SGD on campus, as the student group’s actions will be guided by what SGD means to both the members of the group and student population.
This study will be largely guided by the theory of inhabited institutionalism: a mesosociological perspective that highlights interactions among individual actors as integral to institutional processes, with institutional myth and organization being the two other components (Cleckner & Hallett, 2022; Hallett & Hawbaker, 2021; Hallett & Ventresca, 2006). Another way to interpret the relationship among the three components is that organizational inhabitants interact and behave according to their varied interpretation of institutional myths, such as diversity and inclusion, within the structural confines of an organization. Context of institutional and organizational processes is also highlighted by inhabited institutionalism as extra-local and local factors—i.e., context—largely determine “couplings” among the three foregoing components (Cleckner & Hallett, 2022).
Utilizing this theory, I will employ an explanatory sequential mixed methods design (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2018) in a comparative case study (Bartlett & Vavrus, 2017). In selecting a total of four study sites, I will use two criteria: HEIs’ type (i.e., public and private) and tier (high and low). In the first phase of the study, I will utilize an online survey followed by content analysis of policy and diversity-related documents and semi-structured interviews to collect pertinent data from sexuality- and gender-diverse international collegians.
Overall, this topic is important as HEIs around the world—and in the US, particularly—have experienced a rise in the number of inbound students. The US especially hosts about one million international students and will likely continue to be a popular destination for higher education (Mok et al., 2015). Understanding how the US collegiate experiences of sexuality- and gender-diverse international students are like and what types of cross-cultural exchanges occur—and with what (extra)personal consequences—would make both epistemic and practical contributions regarding SGD, which continues to be a globally salient issue.

Author

• Hyungoo Lee, Teachers College, Columbia University